the wild bunch
Light, bright, bold – the home of fashion blue blood Margherita Missoni is a riot of zigzag swag
returning to her Italian roots, fashion blue blood Margherita Missoni has created a home that bursts with her family’s trademark passion for pattern and colour
V arese, a city about an hour’s train ride to the north of Milan, became popular in the mid-1800s as a getaway for the capital’s wealthy citizens. Today, its best-known residents are probably the Missonis, fashion’s famous knitwear clan. ottavio and rosita Missoni established the company nearby in 1953, and the region still serves as the base for design operations and home to many family members.
Though Missoni’s iconic zigzag print is now synonymous with movie stars and european aristocrats, Varese remains slow and sleepy. and in 2012, when Margherita Maccapani Missoni, herself a designer and the eldest of the family’s third generation (her mother, angela, is current creative director), married eugenio amos, a race car driver who also grew up there, she used the hashtag #Varesetheplacetobe as an ironic tribute to her beloved hometown. ‘It was surreal to see all of my friends from the fashion world descend here,’ she recalls. The gag went viral, and ‘it ended up on the front page of the local newspapers!’
Margherita, now 35, left after high school, first for Milan, then on to Barcelona, new York, Paris, and rome before circling back to Milan. after she and eugenio married, she craved a home where
The Missoni brand is known for its bold colours and contrasting prints, and this ethos informs the look of the house
they could put down roots back in the place they grew up. so the next year, after finding the ideal site, the couple enlisted Milanbased architect aldo cibic to build a four-bedroom house there. Margherita insisted on handling the interiors herself. ‘Which was maybe a mistake,’ she admits with a sigh. ‘I’d never done a house before, and I underestimated how much work it entailed. I thought I’d just be picking out wallpaper. ha!’ now, five years later, she’s finally wrapped it up. ‘It turned out to be the biggest job I’ve ever done, and I can’t help but be extremely proud of it.’
The Missoni brand is known for its embrace of bold colours and contrasting prints, and this same ethos informs the look of the house. ‘colour and shape took priority over period coherence,’ she says. The majority of the furnishings were sourced online – ‘cruising ebay is one of my favourite activities’ – or found on frequent day trips with eugenio. ‘We’d agree to take a day off to go on a romantic adventure. so we’d wake up at 5:00 a.m., open the newspaper, and say, “Today, let’s go to this art fair in Belgium.” We’d jump in the car and try and make it back in time for dinner.’ Margherita never bothered with a tape measure, buying items on instinct and storing them in a rapidly expanding facility nearby. In the end, ‘incredibly, nearly everything fit perfectly,’ she boasts.
The daring design sense that’s part of her dna is evident throughout the house. one of the first things installed was a giant spider-man on the ceiling of the playroom for her two boys. a garden mural painted by Pictalab, an artist collective based in Milan, covers the dining room’s walls – and ceiling. Flamboyant marbles, including one nicknamed Missoni by the company that supplied it, and bold Josef Frank wallpapers for svenskt Tenn define the bathrooms. The kitchen floor and walls are clad in a punchy artisanal tile. ‘It turned out to be the most expensive material per square